CURRICULUM VITAE DEBDATTA CHOWDHURY ADDRESS: 7/6 D.P.P. ROAD, NAKTALA, KOLKATA 700047, INDIA EMAIL: [email protected] [email protected] MOBILE: +919830410957 CURRENT POSITION Assistant Professor in Gender Studies, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta RESEARCH INTEREST Gender and Legal Jurisprudence, Border/Partition/Migration Studies EDUCATION Name of Examination & Institute/ University Year Marks in Class/Div Board Percentage Secondary (X) under West Carmel High School, 2000 86 1st Div Bengal Board of Secondary Kolkata, India Education Higher Secondary Carmel High School, 2002 72.3 1st Div (Humanities) (X+II) under Kolkata, India West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education 3-year Bachelor of Arts in Presidency College, 2005 55.75 2nd Class History (with English and University of Calcutta (Honours) Political Science as pass subjects) 2-year Master of Arts in University of Calcutta 2007 63.88 1st Class South and Southeast Asian Studies with Special 1st Position Papers: Dessertation: ‘Portrayal Of Female Refugees In Ritwik Ghatak’s I) Gender Studies Films: Meghe Dhaka Tara, Komal Gandhar, Subarnarekha’. II) Refugee Studies Doctor of University of 2014 Philosophy(PhD) in Law Westminster, London Thesis Title: 'Marginal Lives, Peripheral Practices: A Study of Border Narratives along the West Bengal-Bangladesh Border’ 1 MERITS 1 Qualified in the National Eligibility Test held on 17.12.2006 in ‘International and Area Studies’. 2 Awarded Gold Medal for securing first position with first class in M.A. Examinations in South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta, 2007. PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 1 Currently pursuing Post-Graduate Diploma in Human Rights Law (Distance Education Programme), National Law School of India University, Bengaluru 2 POSH Virtual Training Workshop on “The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013 and the “UGC (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal of Sexual Harassment of Women Employees and Students in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2015, conducted by SHLC—Sexual Harassment Law Compliance Advisory, 23-30 June 2020. ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS Book: Identity and Experience at the India-Bangladesh Border: The Crisis of Belonging. London & New York: Routledge, 2018. Articles/book chapters: ‘Lands and communities in Flux: The Chars in the Ganga-Brahmaputra Deltaic Region’, in Markus Arnold, Corinne Duboin and Judith Misrahi- Barak (Eds.) Borders and Ecotones in the Indian Ocean: Cultural and Literary Perspectives. Presses universitaires de la Mediterranee, 2020. (Forthcoming) ‘Partitioned Past, Bordered Present: The Need for Engagement between Partition Studies and Border Studies’, in Gorky Chakraborty and Supurna Banerjee (Eds). Borderlands, Orient Blackswan, 2021. (Forthcoming) ‘Bengal Partitioned, Bengal Claimed: Ethno-Religious Politics Across the Bengal Border’, in Anindita Ghoshal (Ed.). Revisiting and Remembering Partition: Issues Related to Eastern and North-Eastern India, Primus, 2021. 2 (Forthcoming) ‘Contesting Common Sense: Smuggling Across the India- Bangladesh Border’, Mahmoud Keshavarz and Shahram Khosravi (Eds.). Seeing like a Smuggler: Ethnographic, Ethical and Material Perspectives. Pluto Books, 2021. ‘Çrossers of the peripheries: Some aspects of cross-border livelihood practices along the West Bengal-Bangladesh border’, Westminster Law Review, 5(1): 1-11, February 2016. ‘Exploring Narratives, Rationalising Data: A Study of the West Bengal- Bangladesh Border’, Review of Social Studies (ISSN: 205-448X), 1(1):111- 131, Autumn 2014. 'Masculinity at work, masculinity at stake: 'Male' negotiations along the West Bengal-Bangladesh border', in Rohit K. Dasgupta and Steven Baker (Eds.) Popular Masculine Cultures in India: Critical Essays (ISBN: 978-93-80677- 44-6), 26-44 Kolkata, Delhi: Setu Prakashani, 2012. 'Territory, Space, Cognition: Revisiting the Bengal-Bangladesh border', Perspectives: Asia-Pacific, Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial International Conference, Indian Association for Asian and Pacific Studies, 170-182. Kolkata 2012. ‘Space, identity, territory: Marichjhapi Massacre, 1979’, The International Journal of Human Rights (ISSN: 1364-2987), 15(5): 664-682, June 2011. Blog posts: ‘Vulnerable Groups in Higher Education Institutions vis a vis the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Higher Education Institutions’, Sexual Harassment Law Compliance, 6 September 2020 Book Reviews: ‘Neejbhumey porobashi, tai shoronarthi’, Book Review of Ranabir Samaddar and Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury (Eds.) Rohingyas in South Asia (Routledge, 2018), Anandabazar Patrika, 11 December 2020. CONFERENCES/PRESENTATIONS 1 ‘Of Consensus, Contentions and Continuities: Feminist Legal Jurisprudence in India’, Multidisciplinary Online Lecture Series on Gender Studies, Ramkrishna Sarada Mission College, Kolkata, 5 January 2021 2 ‘The Politics and Economics of Illegal Migration: Cross-Border Movement of Semi/Un-Skilled Women in South Asia’, One-Day International Webinar on 3 People, Border and Mobility: Challenges in the India-Bangladesh Relations, Sreegopal Banerjee College, West Bengal, 30 September 2020 3 ‘Gender and Migration: An Overview’, Conference on State, Community, Citizenship: Rewriting Histories of Gender, School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, 16 March 2020 4 ‘Writing the Partition, Living the Border: The Journey from Partition Studies to Border Studies’, Research Methods Lectures, Ambedkar University Delhi, 16 October 2019 5 ‘Nation at its Margins: Gendered Practices across the West Bengal-Bangladesh border’, Special Lecture, Ambedkar University Delhi, 6 March 2019 6 ‘The Making and Unmaking of Border Towns across the West Bengal-Bangladesh border’, Lecture Series, Janki Devi Memorial College, Delhi, 5 March 2019 7 ‘Cartographic Consequences of the Partition: Territorial Disparities across the West Bengal-Bangladesh border’, Special Lecture, Ambedkar University Delhi, 26 February 2019. 8 ‘Visual Representation of Caste in India: A Case of Indian Cinema’, Introductory Presentation in Historia (Department of History), Loreto College, Kolkata, 16 February 2019. 9 ‘Lands and communities in flux: Riverine border chars as transitional zones’, Ecotones 4 Conference, Kolkata, 13-15 December 2018. 10 ‘Festivals across Fence: Partition, religion and (border) festivities’, AAS-in-Asia 2018, New Delhi, 5-8 July 2018 11 ‘Research Methodology: Research Insights on Doing Social Science Research’, Bengal Institute of Business Studies, Kolkata, 20 March 2018. 12 ‘Women and Politics’, Department of Political Science, Victoria Institution, Kolkata, 24 November 2017. 13 ‘Partition and its antipathies: Ethno-religious radicalism across the Bengal border’, Seminar on Revisiting and Remembering Partition: Issues Related to Eastern and North-Eastern India, Department of History, Diamond Harbour Women’s University, Sarisha, 21-22 August 2017. 14 ‘Linking lives: Renewing lost linkages in a partitioned Bengal’, Conference on Partition in Bengal: Looking Back After 70 Years, Victoria Memorial Hall and Indian Museum and New Zealand India Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington, Kolkata, 17-18 August 2017. 15 ‘Making Sense of Common Sense: Life and Livelihood Challenges across the West Bengal-Bangladesh Border’, SYLFF Lecture Series, Jadavpur University, 4 Kolkata, 11 November 2016. 16 'The Spectre of Partition: Bare Life and Statelessness in the India-Bangladesh Enclaves', Workshop on 'The Long History of Partition in Eastern India', Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, 16-17 June 2014. 17 ‘Being’ and ‘becoming’ the marginal: Interrogating ethno-religious and caste narratives along the West Bengal-Bangladesh border’, Australian National University, Canberra, 29 May 2014. 18 ‘Reinterpreting border narratives at the India-Bangladesh border’, Annual Conference of the Law Literature and the Humanities Association of Australasia: Interpellations, Australian National University, Canberra, 5-7 December 2013. 19 ‘India-Bangladesh Border’, 5th Crossing Over International Symposium, Cleveland State University, Ohio, 11-13 October 2013. 20 ‘Disowned and distressed: Revisiting the India-Bangladesh Enclaves’, Queen Mary Postgraduate Legal Research Conference: Reinvigorating Legal Thought in Times of Change, Queen Mary University of London, London, 6 June 2013. 21 ‘To cross or not to cross: Some aspects of cross-border livelihood practices along the West Bengal-Bangladesh border’, Westminster Graduate Conference, University of Westminster, London, 16 May 2013. 22 ‘When, what, why’: Time, frame and reason in the context of negotiating methodological questions and field data’, London Center for Social Studies Conference, King’s College London, 19 April 2013. 23 ‘Bordered Existences: Women at the Bengal-Bangladesh border’, PECANS Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 25-26 July 2011. 24 ‘Territory, Space, Cognition: Reflections on the Bengal-Bangladesh border’, The Fifth Biennial International Conference of Indian Association for Asian and Pacific Studies at Sikkim University, 10-12 December, 2010. 25 ‘Space, identity, territory: Marichjhapi Massacre, 1979’, Graduate Conference, School of Law, University of Westminster, London, June, 2010. ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE 1 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, March-October 2020 5 2 Assistant Professor in Gender Studies, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, June 2016 to May 2019. 3 Guest Lecturer